Sunday, June 30, 2019

Building Bridges Mural Opening Event in Montague Yesterday...

Saturday June 29th, 2019

Two years ago, the movement to change the TFHS mascot shook the town of Montague, the school district and the Connecticut River valley. Area residents were forced to reexamine their identities, their relationships with Native neighbors, and the Native and colonial history of this place.

It’s been a difficult couple of years, but residents across the board love the Great Falls, are invested in it, and want to see our community come together and be proud again. “Building Bridges: Connecting Our Community’s Native Roots with Our Diverse Present” is a mural project bringing together Native elders, student artists, Native artists and other local artists to co-create a mural at the Great Falls, a site of cultural, spiritual and economic significance for both indigenous and settler peoples.

The mural is being painted on the side of the Montague Parks & Recreation building in Unity Park, which sees thousand of visitors each month. Collaborative design for "Building Bridges” took place in March, April and May of 2018, and involved tribal historians, Native and local artists and area youth. 

The mural is divided into 5 panels, with the Great Falls, 13 moons and Medicine Wheel at the Center, and the 2 of the 4 seasons/directions on either wide, with the Eagle and Condor in the North and South Sky. The mural tells the stories of the local peoples over the ages, with a recreation theme, as requested by our host Montague Parks & Recreation.

During the Summer and Fall of 2018, the mural came to life and is now about half painted. Our group is fundraising to complete the mural this Summer, to hold a discussion and documentary film screening, and to have a celebration with drumming, songs and stories to gift this art to the community.

“Building Bridges” has created many unplanned connections, including forging new friendships among members of different regional tribes and inspiring collaborations among Native and non-Native residents for future social justice projects.

Montague Parks and Recreation Building

Working on the Mural Painting Project

Food and Drinks Table at Mural Project

Indigenous Storytelling at Mural Opening

Drumming and Chanting at Opening Event

Friday, June 28, 2019

Interdependence Day Weekend, is Coming to Sirius Community!


Joyful Productivity Stacking Wood Domes

Stephen is Feeding the Chickens at Sirius

The Summer Solstice Bonfire at Sirius

The Cob House Office Interior at Sirius

View of the Kitchen inside Cob House

Looking Toward the Orchard at Sirius

Interior View of Lachsme Greenhouse

The Outside Well Water Pump at Sirius

An Exterior View of the Retreat House

An Interior View of the Retreat House

One of Several Hearthstones on Land at Sirius

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Nikola Tesla: Everything is the Light... (Colorado Springs Part 2)

1899, Interview with Nikola Tesla
Everything is the Light

Once, in 1899, Nikola Tesla had an interview with certain journalist John Smith, when Tesla said “Everything is the Light“. In one of its rays is the fate of nations, each nation has its own ray in that great light source, which we see as the Sun. And remember: no one man that existed did not die.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, you have gained the glory of the man who got involved in the cosmic processes. Who are you, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: It is a right question, Mr. Smith, and I will try to give you the right answer to it.

Journalist: Some say you’re from the country of Croatia, from the area called Lika, where together with the people are growing trees, rocks and starry sky. They say that your home village is named after the mountain flowers, and that the house, where you were born, is next to the forest and the church.

Tesla: Really, all it true. I’m proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland.

Journalist: Futurists say that the Twenty-and Twenty First Century was born in head of Nikola Tesla. They celebrate conversely magnetic field and sing hymns to Inductions engine. Their creator was called the hunter who caught the light in his net from the depths of the earth, and the warrior who captured fire from heaven. Father of alternating current will make the Physics and Chemistry dominate half the world. Industry will proclaim him as their supreme saint, a banker for the largest benefactors. In the laboratory of Nikola Tesla for the first time is broken atom.

There is created a weapon that causes the earthquake vibrations. There are discovered black cosmic rays. Five races will pray to him in the Temple of the future, because they had taught a great secret that Empedocles elements can be watered with the life forces from the ethers.

Tesla: Yes, these are some of my most important discoveries. I’m a defeated man. I have not accomplished the greatest thing I could.

Journalist: What is it, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: I wanted to illuminate the whole earth. There is enough electricity to become a second sun. Light would appear around the equator, as a ring around Saturn.

Mankind is not ready for the great and good. In Colorado Springs I soaked the earth by electricity. Also we can water the other energies, such as positive mental energy. They are in the music of Bach or Mozart, or in the verses of great poets. In the Earth’s interior, there are energy of Joy, Peace and Love. Their expressions are a flower that grows from the Earth, the food we get out of her and everything that makes man’s homeland. I’ve spent years looking for the way that this energy could influence people. The beauty and the scent of roses can be used as a medicine and the sun rays as a food.

Life has an infinite number of forms, and the duty of scientists is to find them in every form of matter. Three things are essential in this. All that I do is a search for them. I know I will not find them, but I will not give up on them.

Journalist: What are these things?

Tesla: One issue is food. What a stellar or terrestrial energy to feed the hungry on Earth? With what wine watered all thirsty, so that they can cheer in their heart and understand that they are Gods?

Another thing is to destroy the power of evil and suffering in which man’s life passes! They sometimes occur as an epidemic in the depths of space. In this century, the disease had spread from Earth in the Universe.

The third thing is: Is there an excess Light in the Universe? I discovered a star that by all the astronomical and mathematical laws could disappear, and that nothing seems to be modified. This star is in this galaxy. Its light can occur in such density that fits into a sphere smaller than an apple, a heavier than our Solar System. Religions and philosophies teach that man can become the Christ, Buddha and Zoroaster. What I’m trying to prove is wilder, and almost unattainable. This is what to do in the Universe so every being is born as Christ, Buddha or Zoroaster.

I know that gravity is prone to everything you need to fly and my intention is not to make flying devices (aircraft or missiles), but teach individual to regain consciousness on his own wings … Further; I am trying to awake the energy contained in the air. There are the main sources of energy. What is considered as empty space is just a manifestation of matter that is not awakened.

No empty space on this planet, nor in the Universe.. In black holes, what astronomers talk about, are the most powerful sources of energy and life.

Journalist: On the window of your room in hotel “Valdorf-Astoria”, on the thirty-third floor, every morning, the birds arrive.

Tesla: A man must be sentimental towards the birds. This is because of their wings. Human had them once, the real and visible!

Journalist: You have not stopped flying since those distant days in Smiljan!

Tesla: I wanted to fly from the roof and I fell: Children’s calculations could be wrong. Remember, the youth wings have everything in life!

Journalist: Have you ever married? It is not known that you have affection for love or for a woman. Photos from the youth show you were handsome man.

Tesla: Yes. I did not. There are two views: a lot affection or not at all. The center serves to rejuvenate human race. Women for certain people nurtures and strengthen its vitality and spirit. Being single does the same to other people. I chose that second path.

Journalist: Your admirers are complaining that you attacking relativity. The strange is your assertion that the matter has no energy. Everything is imbued with energy, where it is?

Tesla: First was energy, then matter.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, it’s like when you said that you were born by your father, and not on you.

Tesla: Exactly! What about the birth of the Universe? Matter is created from the original and eternal energy that we know as Light .It shone, and there have been appear star, the planets, man, and everything on the Earth and in the Universe. Matter is an expression of infinite forms of Light, because energy is older than it. There are four laws of Creation. The first is that the source of all the baffling, dark plot that the mind cannot conceive, or mathematics measure. In that plot fit the whole Universe.

The second law is spreading a darkness, which is the true nature of Light, from the inexplicable and it’s transformed into the Light. The third law is the necessity of the Light to become a matter of Light. The fourth law is: no beginning and no end; three previous laws always take place and the Creation is eternal.

Journalist: In the hostility to the theory of relativity you go so far, that you hold lectures against its Creator at your birthday parties..

Tesla: Remember, it is not curved space, but the human mind which cannot comprehend infinity and eternity! If relativity has been clearly understood by its Creator, he would gain immortality, even yet physically, if he is pleased.

I am part of a light, and it is the music. The Light fills my six senses: I see it, hear, feel, smell, touch and think. Thinking of it means my sixth sense. Particles of Light are written note. O bolt of lightning can be an entire sonata. A thousand balls of lightening is a concert.. For this concert

I have created a Ball Lightning, which can be heard on the icy peaks of the Himalayas.
About Pythagoras and mathematics a scientist may not and must not infringe of these two. Numbers and equations are signs that mark the music of the spheres. If Einstein had heard these sounds, he would not create theories of relativity. These sounds are the messages to the mind that life has meaning, that the Universe exists in perfect harmony, and its beauty is the cause and effect of Creation. This music is the eternal cycle of stellar heavens.

The smallest star has completed composition and also, part of the celestial symphony. The man’s heartbeats are part of the symphony on the Earth. Newton learned that the secret is in geometric arrangement and motion of celestial bodies. He recognized that the supreme law of harmony exists in the Universe. The curved space is chaos, chaos is not music. Einstein is the messenger of the time of sound and fury.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, do you hear that music?

Tesla: I hear it all the time. My spiritual ear is as big as the sky we see above us. My natural ear I increased by the radar. According to the Theory of Relativity, two parallel lines will meet in infinity. By that Einstein’s curved will straighten. Once created, the sound lasts forever. For a man it can vanish, but continues to exist in the silence that is man’s greatest power.

No, I have nothing against Mr. Einstein. He is a kind person and has done many good things, some of which will become part of the music. I will write to him and try to explain that the ether exists, and that its particles are what keep the Universe in harmony, and the life in eternity.

Journalist: Tell me, please, under what conditions Angel adopt on the Earth?

Tesla: I have ten of them. Keep good records vigilant.

Journalist: I will document all your words, Dear Mr. Tesla.

Tesla: The first requirement is a high awareness of its mission and work to be done. It must, if only dimly, exist in the early days. Let us not be falsely modest; Oak knows that it is oak tree, a bush beside him being a bush. When I was twelve, I have been sure I will get to Niagara Falls. For most of my discoveries I knew in my childhood that I will achieve them, although not entirely apparent … The second condition to adapt is determination. All that I might, I finished.

Journalist: What is the third condition of adjustment, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: Guidance for all the vital and spiritual energies in labor. Therefore purification of the many effects and needs that man has. I therefore have not lost anything, but just gained.

So I enjoyed every day and night. Write down: Nikola Tesla was a happy man… The fourth requirement is to adjust the physical assembly with a work.

Journalist: What do you mean, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: First, the maintenance of the assembly. Man’s body is a perfect machine. I know my circuit and what’s good for him. Food what nearly all people eat, to me it is harmful and dangerous. Sometimes I visualize that chefs in the world are all in conspiracy against me … Touch my hand.

Journalist: It was cold.

Tesla: Yes. Bloodstream can be controlled, and many processes in and around us. Why are you frightened young man?

Journalist: It’s a story that Mark Twain wrote a mysterious stranger, that wonderful book of Satan, inspired by you.

Tesla: The word “Lucifer” is more charming. Mr. Twain likes to joke. As a child I was healed once by reading his books. When we met here and told him about, he was so touched that he cried. We became friends and he often came to my lab. Once he requested to show him a machine that by vibration provokes a feeling of bliss. It was one of those inventions for entertainment, what I sometimes like to do.

I warned Mr. Twain as not to remain under these vibrations. He did not listen and stayed longer. It ended by being, like a rocket, holding pants, darted into a certain room. It was a diabolically funny, but I kept the seriousness.

But, to adjust the physical circuit, in addition to food, dream is very important . From a long and exhausting work, which required superhuman effort, after one hour of sleep I’d be fully recovered. I gained the ability to manage sleep, to fell asleep and wake up in the time which I have designated. If I do something what I do not understand, I force myself to think about it in my dream, and thus find a solution.

Tesla: The fifth condition of adjustment is memory. Perhaps in the most people, the brain is keeper of knowledge about the world and the knowledge gained through the life. My brain is engaged in more important things than remembering, it is picking what is required at a given moment. This is all around us. It should only be consumed. Everything that we once saw, hear, read and learn, accompanies us in the form of light particles. To me, these particles are obedient and faithful.

Goethe’s Faust, my favorite book, I learned by heart in German as a student, and now it can all recite. I held my inventions for years ‘in my head “, and only then I realized them.

Journalist: You often mentioned the power of visualization.

Tesla: I might have to thank to visualization for all that I invented. The events of my life and my inventions are real in front of my eyes, visible as each occurrence or the item. In my youth I was frightened of not knowing what it is, but later, I learned to use this power as an exceptional talent and gift. I nurtured it, and jealously guarded. I also made corrections by visualization on most of my inventions, and finish them that way, by visualization I mentally solve complex mathematical equations. For that gift I have, I will receive rank High Lama in Tibet.

My eyesight and hearing are perfect and, dare to say, stronger than other people. I hear the thunder of a hundred fifty miles away, and I see colors in the sky that others cannot see. This enlargement of vision and hearing, I had as a child. Later I consciously developed.

Journalist: In youth you have several times been seriously ill. Is it a disease and a requirement to adapt?

Tesla: Yes. It is often the result of a lack of exhaustion or vital force, but often the purification of mind and body from the toxins that have accumulated. It is necessary that a man suffers from time to time. The source of most disease is in the spirit. Therefore the spirit and can cure most diseases. As a student I got sick of cholera which raged in the region of Lika. I was cured because my father finally allowed me to study technology, which was my life. Illusion for me was not a disease, but the mind’s ability to penetrate beyond the three dimensions of the earth.

I had them all my life, and I have received them as all other phenomena around us. Once, in childhood, I was walking along the river with Uncle and said: “From the water will appear the trout, I’ll throw a stone and it is cut.” That’s what happened. Frightened and amazed, his uncle cried: “Bade retro Satan’s!” He was an educated and he spoke in Latin …

I was in Paris when I saw my mother’s death. In the sky, full of light and music floated are wonderful creatures. One of them had a mother’s character, who was looking at me with infinite love. As the vision disappeared, I knew that my mother died.

Journalist: What is the seventh adjustment, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: The knowledge of how the mental and vital energy transform into what we want, and achieve control over all feelings. Hindus call it Kundalini Yoga. This knowledge can be learned, for what they need many years or is acquired by birth. The most of them I acquired by birth. They are in the closest connection with a sexual energy that is after the most widespread in the Universe. The woman is the biggest thief of that energy, and thus the spiritual power.

I’ve always knew that and was alerted. Of myself I created what I wanted: a thoughtful and spiritual machine.

Journalist: A ninth adjustment, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: Do everything that any day, any moment, if possible, not to forget who we are and why we are on Earth. Extraordinary people who are struggling with illness, privation, or the society which hurts them with its stupidity, misunderstanding, persecution and other problems which the country is full of a swamps with insects, leaves behind unclaimed until the end of the work. There are many fallen angels on Earth.

Journalist: What is the tenth adaptation?

Tesla: It is most important. Write that Mr. Tesla played. He played the whole of his life and enjoyed it.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla! Whether it relates to your findings and your work? Is this a game?

Tesla: Yes, dear boy. I have so loved to play with electricity! I always cringe when I hear about the one also the Greek who stole fire. A terrible story about studding, and eagles peck at his liver. Did Zeus did not have enough lightning and thunder, and was damaged for one fervor? There is some misunderstanding…

Lightning are the most beautiful toys that can be found. Do not forget that in your text stand out: Nikola Tesla was the first man who discovered lightning.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, you’re just talking about angels and their adaptation to the Earth.

Tesla: Am I? This is the same. You could write this: he dared to take upon himself the prerogatives of Indri, Zeus and Peron. Imagine one of these gods in a black evening suit, with the bowler hat and wearing white cotton gloves prepares lightning, fires and earthquakes to the New York City elite!

Journalist: Readers love the humor of our paper. But you confuse me stating that your findings, which have immense benefits for the people, representing the game. Many will frown on it.

Tesla: Dear Mr. Smith, the trouble is that people are too serious. If they were not, they would be happier and much longer would have lived. Chinese proverb says that the seriousness reduces life. Visiting the inn Tai Pe guessed that he visits the Imperial Palace. But that the newspaper readers would not have frowned, let’s get back to things which they consider important.

Journalist: They would love to hear what your philosophy is.

Tesla: Life is a rhythm that must be comprehended. I feel the rhythm and direct on it and pamper in it. It was very grateful and gave me the knowledge I have. Everything that lives is related to a deep and wonderful relationship: man and the stars, amoebas’ and the sun, the heart and the circulation of an infinite number of worlds. These ties are unbreakable, but they can be tame and to propitiate and begin to create new and different relationships in the world, and that does not violate the old.

Knowledge comes from space; our vision is its most perfect set. We have two eyes: the earthly and spiritual. It is recommended that it become one eye. Universe is alive in all its manifestations, like a thinking animal.

Stone is a thinking and sentient being, such as plant, beast and a man. A star that shines asked to look at, and if we are not a sizeable self-absorbed we would understand its language and message. His breathing, his eyes and ears of the man must comply with breathing, eyes and ears of the Universe.

Journalist: As you say this, it seems to me like I hear Buddhist texts, words or Taoist Parazulzusa.

Tesla: That’s right! This means that there is general knowledge and truth that man has always possessed. In my feeling and experience, the Universe has only one substance and one supreme energy with an infinite number of manifestations of life. The best thing is that the discovery of a secret nature, reveals the other.

One cannot hide, there are around us, but we are blind and deaf to them. If we emotionally tie ourselves to them, they come to us themselves. There are a lot of apples, but one Newton. He asked for just one apple that fell in front of him.

Journalist: A question that might be set at the beginning of this conversation. What was Electricity for you, Dear Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: Everything is Electricity. First was the light, endless source from which points out material and distribute it in all forms that represent the Universe and the Earth with all its aspects of life. Black is the true face of Light, only we do not see this. It is remarkable grace to man and other creatures. One of its particles possesses light, thermal, nuclear, radiation, chemical, mechanical and an unidentified energy.

It has the power to run the Earth with its orbit. It is true Archimedean lever.

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, you’re too biased towards electricity.

Tesla: Electricity I am. Or, if you wish, I am the electricity in the human form. You are Electricity; too Mr. Smith, but you do not realize it.

Journalist: Is it thus your ability to allow fails of electricity of one million volts trough your body?

Tesla: Imagine a gardener who is attacked by herbs. This would indeed be crazy. Man’s body and brain are made from a large amount energy; in me there is the majority of electricity. The energy that is different in everyone is what makes the human “I” or “soul”. For other creatures to their essence, “soul” of the plant is the “soul” of minerals and animals.

Brain function and death is manifested in light. My eyes in youth were black, now blue, and as time goes on and strain the brain gets stronger, they are closer to white. White is the color of heaven. Through my window one morning, landed a white dove, which I fed. She wanted to bring me a word that she was dying. From her eyes the light jets were coming out. Never in the eyes of any creature had I not seen so much light, as in that pigeon.

Journalist: Personnel in your lab speak about flashes of light, flames and lightning that occur if you are angry or into kind of risk.

Tesla: It is the psychic discharge or a warning to be alert. The light was always on my side. Do you know how I discovered the rotating magnetic field and induction motor, which made me became famous when I was twenty-six? One summer evening in Budapest, I watched with my friend Sigetijem sunset.

Thousands of fire was turning around in thousands of flaming colors. I remembered Faust and recited his verses and then, as in a fog, I saw spinning magnetic field, and induction motor. I saw them in the sun!

Journalist: Hotel service telling that at the time of lightning you isolate into the room and talk to yourselves.

Tesla: I talk with lightning and thunder.

Journalist: With them? What language, Mr.Tesla?

Tesla: Mostly my native language. It has the words and sounds, especially in poetry, what is suitable for it.

Journalist: Readers of our magazine would be very grateful if you would interpret that.

Tesla: The sound does not exist only in the thunder and lightning, but, in transformation into the brightness and color. A color can be heard. Language is of the words, which means that it is from the sounds and colors. Every thunder and lightning are different and have their names. I call some of them by the names of those who were close in my life, or by those whom I admire.

In the sky brightness and thunder live my mother, sister, brother Daniel, a poet Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj and other persons of Serbian history. Names such AsIsaiah, Ezekiel, Leonardo, Beethoven, Goya, Faraday, Pushkin and all burning fires mark shoals and tangles of lightning and thunder, which does not stop all night bringing to the Earth precious rain and burning trees or villages.

There is lightning and thunder, and they are the brightest and most powerful, that will not vanish. They are coming back and I recognize them among the thousands.

Journalist: For you, science or poetry is the same?

Tesla: These are the two eyes of one person. William Blake was taught that the Universe was born from the imagination, that it maintains and it will exist as long as there is a last man on the Earth. With it was a wheel to which astronomers can collect the stars of all galaxies. It is the creative energy identical to the light energy.

Journalist: Imagination is more real to you than life itself?

Tesla: It gives birth to the life. I have fed by my taught; I’ve learned to control emotions, dreams and visions. I have always cherished, as I nurtured my enthusiasm. All my long life I spent in ecstasy. That was the source of my happiness. It helped me during all these years to bear with work, which was enough for the five lives. The best is to work at night, because the stellar light, and close bond.

Journalist: You said that I am, like every being, the Light. This flatter me, but I confess, I do not quite understand.

Tesla: Why would you need to understand, Mr. Smith? Suffice it to believe it. Everything is light. In one its ray is the fate of nations, each nation has its own ray in what great light source we see as the sun. And remember: no one who was there did not die. They transformed into the light, and as such exist still. The secret lies in the fact that the light particles restore their original state.

Journalist: This is the resurrection!

Tesla: I prefer to call it: return to a previous energy. Christ and several others knew the secret. I am searching how to preserve human energy. It is forms of Light, sometimes straight like heavenly light. I have not looked for it for my own sake, but for the good of all. I believe that my discoveries make people’s lives easier and more bearable, and channel them to spirituality and morality.

Journalist: Do you think that time can be abolished?

Tesla: Not quite, because the first feature of the energy is that it transforms. It is in perpetual transformation, as clouds of Taoists. But it is possible to leverage the fact that a man preserves consciousness after the earthly life. In every corner of the universe exist energy of life; one of them is immortality, whose origin is outside of man, waiting for him.

The universe is spiritual; we are only half that way. The Universe is more moral than us, because we do not know his nature and how to harmonize our lives with it. I am not scientist, science is perhaps the most convenient way to find the answer to the question that always haunt me, and which my days and nights turned into fire.

Journalist: What’s the matter?

Tesla: How are your eyes brightened!… What I wanted to know is: what happens to a falling star as the sun goes out? Stars fall like dust or seed in this or in other worlds, and the sun be scattered in our minds, in the lives of many beings, what will be reborn as a new light, or cosmic wind scattered in infinity.

I understand that this is necessary included in the structure of the Universe. The thing is, though, is that one of these stars and one of these suns, even the smallest, preserves.

Journalist: But, Mr. Tesla, you realize that this is necessary and is included in the constitution of the world!

Tesla: When a man becomes concuss; that his highest goal must be to run for a shooting star, and tries to capture it; shall understand that his life was given to him because of this and will be saved. Stars will eventually be capable to catch!

Journalist: And what will happen then?

Tesla: The creator will laugh and say: ”It fall only that you chase her and grab her.”

Journalist: Isn’t all of this contrary to the cosmic pain, which so often you mention in your writings? And what is it cosmic pain?

Tesla: No, because we are on Earth … It is an illness whose existence the vast majority of people are not aware of. Hence, many other illnesses, suffering, evil, misery, wars and everything else what makes human life an absurd and horrible condition. This disease cannot be completely cured, but awareness shall make it less complicated and hazardous. Whenever one of my close and dear people were hurt, I felt physical pain. This is because our bodies are made as of similar material, and our soul related with unbreakable strands. Incomprehensible sadness that overwhelmed us at times means that somewhere, on the other side on this planet, a child or generous man died.

The entire Universe is in certain periods sick of itself, and of us. Disappearance of a star and the appearance of comets affect us more than we can imagine. Relationships among the creatures on the Earth are even stronger, because of our feelings and thoughts the flower will scent even more beautiful or will fall in silence.

These truths we must learn in order to be healed. Remedy is in our hearts and evenly, in the heart of the animals that we call the Universe.

Forty-Five Years of Retrograde Karma Trumped at Last by Time!

~ THE SIGN OF INKY: A REVERSAL OF FINANCIAL IMPROVIDENCE~

May 15, 1974 - May 15, 2019

Ever since my personal dream of establishing an intentional community in the woods of Central Maine collapsed along with my unfinished camp in the Town of Stetson, this endeavor was lost until I came to live at Sirius Community in September of 2015 as a participant in the Immersion Program. I left my home in New Bedford, Massachusetts & Susan (my wife of almost 30 years) to resume pursuit of “Life in the Woods” like unto Henry David Thoreau. Our 2 children, Mary & David, were grown with lives of their own to live - she in Boylston, MA near Worcester while he moved out of state to Crossville, TN. In September of 2016 we amicably divorced, walking into the Courthouse together after a quick breakfast, untying the knot of our union (she with counsel and I pro se), then went out for lunch in the Historic District of “The Whaling City.”

Sirius Community was founded in 1978, the same year I erected the 24’ x 36’ wood frame camp in Stetson, by Gordon Davidson & Corinne McLaughlin. Both of them were former members of the Findhorn Community in Scotland. A year later Bruce Davidson, Gordon’s younger brother, & his significant other Linda Reimer, came to Sirius in Shutesbury, Massachusetts to help build the Eco-village where I began exploring membership in 2015. I started this process by renting a room in the Hearthstone Village at a nearby house owned by a local musician. I walked up Baker Road for Saturday “Joyful Productivity” work circles, followed by a lunch cooked in their vegetarian kitchen and clean-up duties. I gravitated toward the Hobart mechanical dishwashing machine that I already knew how to operate from previous experience on Nantucket Island and in Bar Harbor, Maine.

On July 1st, 2016 I joined the residential program as I continued to explore membership at the Community for much of the next year. I lived in what was called “The Connecting Space” as it used to be a play yard for two families living in The Lighthouse and Kailasa at the time. It was made into a studio apartment, which became “My Space” for the next 4 years. I also knew it as “Hermitage of the 9th Archetype,” because my oversoul is represented by the Hermit card that appears in many Tarot decks, including the Universal Rider-Waite Tarot: my preference during metaphysical interpretation sessions with clients.

Stability in my life was up-ended February 26-27, 2019 when I moved hastily from “My Space” into an upstairs room with two male roommates at the Community Center. Saturday, was the weekly “Joyful Productivity” work circle from 9 AM - 1 PM (with a call put out to all who joined the circle to help move me into the East Wing Apartment). Several people came & moved all belongings, after packing them in boxes, and placed them into my new space which was a bit smaller & required use of the loft ladder for excess. Loft in the Connecting Space was only for storage (plus a guest on Futon mattress who never came back to use it, after I failed to make room for her to sleep up there & asked her to leave in the middle of a cold dark night). When everything was moved by lunch time my room was a chaotic jumble that took weeks for me to organize. Eventually, I had it livable and figured out how to navigate through storage boxes to locate anything I needed. I was not destined to remain at the Community Center for very long because change was in the wind for me and I would soon be on the road.

During my stable period in the Connecting Space, I participated in a private online members group & connected with a woman near my age who lived in the “Sooner State" of Oklahoma named Patricia. We were corresponding occasionally, via Zoom during private member calls, but our relationship “ramped up,” when her house went up for sale, was emptied (movers were carpetbaggers, to say the least) and then sold. She temporarily relocated to rural Arkansas. The experience she had living there “bottomed out” on December 24, 2018 when a relative in Tulsa scooped her up from there and let her live in his home, with all ten of her animals: 6 dogs & 4 cats! I was “pinged” when this woman sent me an emergency message that she was booted from this private members group. I inquired about why she was kicked out, but the answer that I received was, “She knows why. She just isn’t telling you.” This Facebook Messenger chat became daily for us, many times with cameras rolling, so it was only a matter of time before we fell in love online. I lived to see her green eyes & beautiful smile on camera beneath her fiery red hair, though artificially colored now. By April 5, 2019 I made a conscious decision to meet Patricia in density & board a bus from Springfield, Massachusetts directly to Tulsa. My friend Geni drove me to the bus station downtown where my journey from the state that has served me as home, for the most part, since I originally stuck out my thumb to hitchhike across the country from California, the state where I was born & raised, to “seek my fortune” on May 10, 1971. I was ready to begin a new adventure when I decided to board that Greyhound Bus that would bring me to meet my newfound love interest.

May 15, 2019 is Patricia’s birthday. I AM sitting in the gazebo at the Riverview RV Park in Sand Springs, Oklahoma as a black cat appeared from behind parked cars, moving left, then crossing behind a bulldozer at a construction site for the new Community Center, before reappearing on the other side of it. This date, back in 1974, was the date when my “Halloween Cat” (Inky) disappeared outside of my cottage on Nantucket Island, where I was living with my first wife at the time. Patricia is the key, through synchronicity of her birthday in 2019, showing me an involuntary “Curse of Improvidence” which had sent me financially down the drain in 1974, is removed by Mother-Father God. I received the “Sign of Inky” to seal this truth as fact.The curse is GONE! 
                                                                        
Joseph David Henry Ware Bryan-Royster      

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Legendary Dr. John, the Night Tripper, is dead at the age of 77...

Malcolm John Rebennack (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019), better known by his stage name Dr. John, was an American singer and songwriter. His music combines blues, pop, jazz, boogie woogie and rock and roll.

Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he gained a following in the late 1960s after the release of his album Gris-Gris and his appearance at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. He performed a lively, theatrical stage show inspired by medicine shows, Mardi Gras costumes and voodoo ceremonies. Rebennack recorded more than 20 albums and in 1973 produced a top-10 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time".

The winner of six Grammy Awards, Rebennack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by singer John Legend in March 2011. In May 2013, Rebennack received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Tulane University.

Early life and career

Rebennack was born in New Orleans in 1941 of French heritage. Growing up in the Third Ward, he found early musical inspiration in the minstrel tunes sung by his grandfather and a number of aunts, uncles, sister and cousins who played piano. He did not take music lessons before his teens and endured only a short stint in choir before getting kicked out.[4] His father, the owner of an appliance store and record shop, exposed him as a young boy to jazz musicians King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, who later inspired his 2014 release, Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch. Throughout his adolescence his father's connections enabled him access to the recording rooms of rock artists, including Little Richard and Guitar Slim. He began to perform in New Orleans clubs, mainly on guitar, and played on stage with various local artists.

When he was about 13 years old, Rebennack met Professor Longhair. Impressed by the professor's flamboyant attire and striking musical style,[4] Rebennack soon began performing with him, and began his life as a professional musician.

At age 16 Rebennack was hired by Johnny Vincent as a producer at Ace Records. There, he gained experience working with many artists, including James Booker and Earl King. While a struggling student at Jesuit High School, he was already playing in night clubs, something the Jesuit fathers disapproved of. They told him to either stop playing in clubs or leave the school; he chose the latter, and from then on focused entirely on music.

In late 1950s New Orleans, Rebennack gigged with local bands including Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners, (Paul Staele/Dennis "Bootsie" Cuquet, drums; Earl Stanley, bass; Charlie Miller, trumpet; Charlie Maduell, sax; Roland "Stone" LeBlanc, vocals), Frankie Ford and the Thunderbirds, and Jerry Byrne and the Loafers. He had a regional hit with a Bo Diddley-influenced instrumental called "Storm Warning" on Rex Records in 1959. At A&R he and Charlie Miller recorded monophonic singles on 45s for Johnny Vincent and Joe Corona for local labels Ace, Ron, and Ric. He oversaw the rhythm section while Miller wrote the horn arrangements and headed up the horns. This continued until Miller moved to New York and to study music formally.

Rebennack's career as a guitarist was stunted circa 1960, when his left ring finger was injured by a gunshot during an incident at a Jackson, Mississippi gig. After the injury, Rebennack concentrated on bass guitar before making piano his main instrument, developing a style influenced by Professor Longhair.

Rebennack became involved in illegal activities in New Orleans, using and selling narcotics and running a brothel. He was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to two years in a federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas. His sentence ended in 1965 and he left for Los Angeles.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1965[5] where he became a "first call" session musician in the Los Angeles studio scene in the 1960s and 1970s and was part of the so-called "Wrecking Crew" stable of studio musicians. He provided backing for Sonny & Cher (and some of the incidental music for Cher's first film, Chastity), for Canned Heat on their albums Living the Blues (1968) and Future Blues (1970), and for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on Freak Out! (1966).

Voodoo influence
As a young man Rebennack was interested in New Orleans voodoo, and in Los Angeles he developed the idea of the Dr. John persona for his old friend Ronnie Barron, based on the life of Dr. John, a Senegalese prince, a medicinal and spiritual healer who came to New Orleans from Haiti. This free man of color lived on Bayou Road and claimed to have 15 wives and over 50 children. He kept an assortment of snakes and lizards, along with embalmed scorpions and animal and human skulls, and sold gris-gris, voodoo amulets that protected the wearer from harm.

Rebennack decided to produce a record and a stage show based on this concept, with Dr. John serving as an emblem of New Orleans heritage. Although initially the plan was for Barron to front the act assuming the identity of "Dr. John", while Rebbenack worked behind the scenes as Dr. John's writer/musician/arranger/producer, this didn't come to pass. Barron dropped out of the project, and Rebennack took over the role (and identity) of Dr. John.[7] Gris-Gris became the name of Dr. John's debut album, representing his own form of "voodoo medicine".

1968–1971: Dr. John, the Night Tripper
Beginning in the late 1960s, Rebennack gained fame as a solo artist after adopting the persona of "Dr. John, The Night Tripper". Dr. John's act combined New Orleans-style rhythm and blues with psychedelic rock and elaborate stage shows that bordered on voodoo religious ceremonies, including elaborate costumes and headdress. In 1970, when Howard Smith asked him where the name "Dr. John the Night Tripper" came from, he responded, "Before that I was Professor Bizarre. Cats used to call me things like "Bishop" or "Governor" or somethin’ but they started callin’ me "Doctor" for a while, so I just hung it on myself for keeps." [9] On the earliest Dr. John records, the artist billing was "Dr. John, The Night Tripper", while the songwriting credits billed him as "Dr. John Creaux". Within a few years the "Night Tripper" subtitle was dropped, and Rebennack resumed using his real name for writing and producing/arranging credits.

Gris-Gris, his 1968 debut album combining voodoo rhythms and chants with the New Orleans music tradition, was ranked 143rd on Rolling Stone′s "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Three more albums, Babylon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon, and Herbs (1971), were released in the same vein as Gris-Gris.

During early to mid-1969, Dr. John toured extensively, backed by supporting musicians Richard "Didymus" Washington (congas), Richard Crooks (drums), David L. Johnson (bass), Gary Carino (guitar), and singers Eleanor Barooshian, Jeanette Jacobs from The Cake, and Sherry Graddie. A second lineup formed later in the year for an extensive tour of the East Coast with Crooks and Johnson joined by Doug Hastings (guitar) and Don MacAllister (mandolin). Also in 1969, Dr. John contributed to the Music from Free Creek "supersession" project, playing on three tracks with Eric Clapton. Washington and Crooks also contributed to the project.

By the time The Sun, Moon, and Herbs was released, he had gained a notable cult following, which included artists such as Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, who both took part in the sessions for that album. This album served as a transition from his Night Tripper voodoo, psychedelic persona to one more closely associated with traditional New Orleans R&B and funk. His next album, Dr. John's Gumbo, with drummer Fred Staehle serving as the band's backbone, proved to be a landmark recording and is one of his most popular to this day.

1972–1974: Gumbo, In the Right Place and Desitively Bonnaroo
Along with Gris-Gris, Dr. John is perhaps best known for his recordings in the period 1972-74. 1972's Dr. John's Gumbo, an album covering several New Orleans R&B standards with only one original, is considered a cornerstone of New Orleans music. In his 1994 autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon, Dr. John writes, "In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the late 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar." The lead single from the album, "Iko Iko", broke into the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, eventually reaching #71. In 2003, Dr. John's Gumbo was ranked number 404 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

With Gumbo, Dr. John expanded his career beyond the psychedelic voodoo music and theatrics which had driven his career since he took on the Dr. John persona, although it has always remained an integral part of his music and identity. It was not until 1998's Anutha Zone that he again concentrated on this aspect of his music wholly for a full album. "After we cut the new record", he wrote, "I decided I'd had enough of the mighty-coo-de-fiyo hoodoo show, so I dumped the Gris-Gris routine we had been touring with since 1967 and worked up a new act—a Mardi Gras revue featuring the New Orleans standards we had covered in Gumbo."

In early 1973 Thomas Jefferson Kaye produced an album featuring a collaboration with Dr. John, Mike Bloomfield and John Paul Hammond. This album, Triumvirate, was recorded in Columbia Studios, San Francisco, and Village Recorders, Los Angeles.

In 1973, with Allen Toussaint producing and The Meters backing, Dr. John released the seminal New Orleans funk album In the Right Place. In the same way that Gris-Gris introduced the world to the voodoo-influenced side of his music, and in the manner that Dr. John's Gumbo began his career-long reputation as an esteemed interpreter of New Orleans standards, In the Right Place established Dr. John as one of the main ambassadors of New Orleans funk. In describing the album, Dr. John states, "The album had more of a straight-ahead dance feel than ones I had done in the past, although it was still anchored solid in R&B."[citation needed] It rose to #24 on the Billboard album chart. In July 1973, the single "Right Place Wrong Time" peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, as well as peaking at #19 on the Hot Soul Singles chart. A second single, "Such a Night", peaked at #42. Still in heavy rotation on most classic rock stations, "Right Place Wrong Time" remains his most recognized song. Artists such as Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, and Doug Sahm contributed single lines to the lyrics, which lists several instances of ironic bad luck and failure.

Dr. John attempted to capitalize on In the Right Place's successful formula, again collaborating with Allen Toussaint and The Meters, for his next album, Desitively Bonnaroo – part of which a Tennessee festival took as its name – released in 1974. Although similar in feel to In the Right Place, it failed to catch hold in the mainstream as its predecessor had done. It did produce the single "(Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away," which peaked at #92 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and to date is the last time he hit the Hot 100. It was his last pure funk album until 1994's Television,[11] although like his voodoo and traditional New Orleans R&B influences, funk has continued to heavily influence most of his work to the present day, especially in his concerts.

In the mid-1970s Dr. John began an almost 20-year-long collaboration with the R&R Hall of Fame/Songwriters Hall of Fame writer Doc Pomus, to create songs for Dr. John's releases City Lights and Tango Palace, and for B.B. King's Stuart Levine-produced There Must Be a Better World Somewhere, which won a Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording in 1982. Dr. John also recorded "I'm On a Roll" – the last song written with Pomus prior to his death in 1991 – for the now out-of-print Rhino/Forward Records 1995 tribute to Pomus titled Til the Night Is Gone: A Tribute to Doc Pomus. The tribute included covers of Pomus-penned songs by Bob Dylan, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, Brian Wilson, The Band, Los Lobos, Dion, Rosanne Cash, Solomon Burke, and Lou Reed. According to Pomus' daughter, Dr. John and her father were very close friends as well as writing partners. Dr. John delivered one of a number of eulogies and performed with singer Jimmy Scott at Pomus' funeral on March 17, 1991 in New York City.

On Thanksgiving Day 1976 he performed "Such a Night" at the farewell concert for The Band, which was filmed by Martin Scorsese and released as The Last Waltz. In 1979, he collaborated with the legendary Professor Longhair on Fess's (another nickname for Henry Byrd) last recording Crawfish Fiesta, as a guitarist and co-producer. The album was awarded the first W.C. Handy Blues Album of the Year in 1980, and was released shortly after Longhair's death in January 1980.